When I was a child, we never took holidays to the beach. I know now that my parents were avoiding the summer crowds and expensive prices of the peak season, but at the time I remember hearing the stories of the other kids’ oceanside retreats and feeling that there was some kind of magical world that I was missing out on. Our end-of-year holidays (summer in Australia, where I live) were always a random lottery of inland locations, camping in caravan parks and being dragged, grumbling and complaining, on day hikes through the bush and up the sides of mountains, before retreating back to hot tents and endless mosquito bites.
It’s no surprise then as I grew older that I jumped at the chance to tag along on trips to friends’ beachside holiday homes and then, as an adult, planned my own coastal retreats. I declared myself an ocean lover and went back to the water whenever I could, drawn to the rhythm and the waves and the stretching horizon.
But over time, the trees called me back. I found a kind of familiarity in the forests, a sense of self that had been buried. The ocean, while I still and will always feel it deeply, was also an attempt at building my own identity and grabbing hold of the things I felt I had missed. It is vast and wide and open and I do love the space it brings but the trees are different, close and protective, in a way that feels like home.
I live in the suburbs, but am fortunate enough to be in a greener area, though more and more of this is now being lost to construction. A new highway build has stripped areas bare and replaced them with concrete, metal and a vague promise of curated parkland that cannot possibly replace what was lost. Still, there are pockets left and I can get lost in them for a while, for which I am grateful. And despite my childhood reluctance, walking and hiking through the trees is now something I do often.
Winter has strangely become my preferred season. As someone who used to complain bitterly about the cold and count the days until summer, this has been a strange realisation, but one that ultimately aligns with what I hold close. From a creative perspective, I look at the world in black and white and muted colour, stripped back to its most minimal and intimate form. I look for shape and contrast and hidden details. I seek solitude and connection to an inner world, a drawing in. All of this lives in winter.
As the earth gets warmer, the colder season arrives later and lasts less time, something that makes me both sad and angry. The journaling app on my phone reminds me that this time last year I was shooting foggy mornings among the trees; this year the fog has yet to appear.
While I check the weather reports and wait, I’ve been playing with photos, arranging and layering and blending. There is a certain amount of alchemy in this activity. I’m working digitally in Photoshop and it’s not anywhere near the magic that can manifest in a darkroom, but it is experimental in a way that allows the process to have a hand in the making. I look for patterns and shapes and how things speak to each other and then I put them together and let them form something new. This style of creative collage is something I have been drawn to over the last year, though I’m still not sure if and how it would fit into my overall work. For now, it enables a kind of creative play, without expectation or end goal and I find satisfaction in the process.
Trees became a central motif in this particular project, speaking of grounding and strength but also of a dying of old things and a space for renewal. I paired them with self-portraits, cropping heavily to create something closer to an obscure reference or suggestion than a full form—again that place for something new. I left space for the skies, cold and clear air and room for the mind to breathe. To me the framing and the negative space almost makes them feel like doorways, glimpses into another world.
More and more I am trying to teach myself to let go, to stop trying to control everything and leave space for things to happen. I’m trying to let my art “be” without it having to “be something”. Perhaps it comes from entering a new phase of life but I’ve struggled a lot over the last few years with feeling like I should have more to show for my time and I have to consistently remind myself that having a life that doesn’t follow the traditional path is ok.